Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [125]
My favorite room is a small soundproof space, padded and lined with wipe-clean plastic. The victims can go in there and draw pictures of their abusers on the walls with marker pens before taking a giant paddle and beating them as hard as they like. They can scream and yell and get rid of all their hostility. Every home should have one. I only wished mine had!
As well as helping the victims express their feelings, we work on building their self-esteem so they can move beyond their experiences. That is where my time running the Barbara Blakeley School of Modeling and Charm really came into play. The center has plenty of therapists to help the children from the inside out, but it was my idea to give them confidence from the outside too. In a special auditorium lined with pivoted mirrors, young girls are encouraged to dress up in new clothes and shoes donated by local fashion stores. Once they’ve been pampered by beauticians who fix their hair and do their makeup, they are persuaded to turn the mirrors around and study their reflections. At first many of them don’t even want to look. To see themselves looking lovely is a shock—like hearing your voice on tape for the first time; it isn’t at all as you hear it in your head.
Many of these girls think of themselves as cheap, ugly, or guilty of compliance in their own abuse. They feel soiled by their experiences and can’t believe how different they look with just a little attention to detail. Seeing their reactions is like watching flowers opening. Suddenly, they lift their heads and put their shoulders back and learn how to carry themselves. Smiles tug at their lips as they finally begin to see their own worth. I knew from mentoring so many young pupils that a sense of self-worth can change everything, and it was wonderful to be able to bring my experiences as the twenty-one-year-old proprietress of a modeling school to these children thirty years later. Just as I had persuaded stores to donate clothes to the models in Long Beach, I cajoled JCPenney and Target to give garments so that each child gets to keep one outfit. For those who feel up to participating, a special fashion show is organized for friends, staff, and family on “graduation day.” A child who may have arrived at the center physically or emotionally battered, head low and voice muted, can often be seen months later strutting on a catwalk, turning and posing, confident, grinning, and reborn.
Of course, no amount of makeup or clothing can heal the deepest emotional or physical scars, and many children we try to help leave as scarred and damaged as when they arrived. A few return to their families only to be abused further. Others grow up and meet or marry abusers, and so the cycle goes on. But from the letters, cards, and follow-up testimonials we receive, we do believe that we are winning.
I think of all the things we manage to achieve with these children, it was the artwork they are encouraged to do which most impressed Frank. The pictures victims draw when they first come into the center are almost always bleak scenes of sinister shapes and angry faces. Some show cigarettes, drugs, or bottles of booze. The artwork they produce toward the end of their therapy couldn’t be more contrasting. Those pictures are usually gaily colored images of rainbows and birds flying, hearts, waggy-tailed dogs, butterflies, and blue skies. Sometimes the children scribble their wishes for the future in the margins, revealing their hopes to train as beauticians or models, be teachers, or become